Product Placement: A Story About Manufactured Realties (Open)

[TheAutumnComes]

Welcome to modern North American suburbia, land of the McRibwich, the DQ Blizzard, the burnt Starbuck Cappuccino and Old Navy hoodies. The landscape is full of pasteurized McMansions, old town London inspired fake facades on bookstores. And mega churches with ATMs and gift shops. You can travel from California to Toronto to New Jersey to Florida. It's all one prefab, squashed then molded, uniform culture. Its bishops are marketing executives, its clerics are the boys in blue at Best Buy and every man, woman, teen and child in an adherent. They pay Caesar his due with their cookie-cutter debt cards, at the cookie cutter stores, buying cookie cutter products and experiencing the universal experience of cookie-cutter disillusionment. Is there room for love, romance, lust, envy, strife and drama in this world? Does it even mater which home you go home to, which kids you do homework with and which spouse you kiss good night.

This is a role-playing game about the life that manages to continue, despite the Roman bread and butter circus we live in. Democrat or Republican; fur as fashion or as murder; Christian or Hindi.... Who gives a shit? We all drink the same Shamrock Shake and watch the same CSI: Samesville. This is a role-playing game about Anywhere Suburbia where everyone struggles to be seen, to be understood and to find a purpose. This is not a game about sex, but about life, the great reality show we all are cast in. No one goes out into the woods anymore, to make sure that when their life is over, they will have discovered that they had not really lived...

You can jump in anytime. Make sure that you’re a decent writer. Keep the tone as real as you can, with humor and angst. Have fun. Don't post so fast that others can't keep up. Do not get so hung up on a long sex scene with one other character that after three real time days we are all skipping your posts, waiting for you to be done, wishing you would find a damn room.

 

[TheAutumnComes]

Ernie's Old Fashioned Deli And Malt Shop was squeezed between a newly remodeled Tower Records and a Guitar Center, which had once been an Electronics Boutique, which had once been a Game Stop. There were rumors that the Tower Records was going to be a Block Buster soon. Every store in the shopping center had changed at least once in the past ten years and been remodeled at least twice; every store except Ernie's. It was like the doddering, foolish old uncle that all the young yuppies try to ignore at the family reunion. While they discuss The Children's Place, The Montessori Schools and The Republican Party, he would be inviting the impressionable children to pull his finger, or telling them inappropriate stories about how far he had gotten, in WWII with that pretty French waitress; with only his chocolate ration and a pair of pantyhose as inducements.

Ernie's was a throwback to a time before multi-national companies had driven out any and every local mercantile and manufacturing concern. They still had penny candy in jars, though it was now a quarter. They still had a full deli case where you could try sample of the meat, before deciding what you wanted on your hoagie. Ernie Abbot, eighty years young, still started every morning at 5 AM. The start of his day included brewing the coffee, cleaning the deli case and slicers, sweeping the front stoop and straightening the magazines. His customers had aged right along with him, except the middle school students who came in at 3:30 every afternoon, looking for a sugar high and a stolen peek at the men’s' magazines.

Like any other day Ernie stood behind the deli counter. He wore one of his favorite white, button down shirts. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing hairy, pale forearms with roped muscle. His red bow tie was in place as well as his U.S.M.C and American Flag pins. Like every morning for fifty seven years, his paper hat was cocked at an angle and his gray eyes twinkled. The lines in this thin face might have grown deeper and his hair might have slowly retired the field of battle, but he still stood ram-rod straight, proud of his little place in the world.

 

[Maid of Marvels]

Kate Morris

A light tap at the back door and the sound of her best friend's voice as she let herself in, brought Kate Morris up from the miasma of self-pity that comprised most of her thoughts these days. "Hi hi," Fran chirupped, setting a box labelled Friedman's Bakery down on the table before giving Kate one of her trademark bear hugs. "I hope the coffee's fresh. The pastries are."

"I just made it... " she looked up at the clock and blinked. Had she really been sitting here for over three hours? "Erm... maybe it's not so fresh after all. I'll make new."

"No, I'll do it. I'm up. Besides, you can go take a shower while it's making. You look like you could use one."

If anyone besides Fran had said such a thing to her, Kate would have died of embarrassment, but she and Fran had been friends since the fourth grade and there was nothing -- or at least little -- that the two girls, now grown women, could talk about; personal hygiene being one of them.

Pulling her robe tight, she didn't argue, just went down the hall and turned the water on before dropping the robe in the hamper and stepping under the pulsating water massage. Admittedly, it felt wonderful.

She had to stop this... this getting into a funk thing. Sometimes it only lasted a day, others it lasted... "Way too long!" she chided herself out loud and finished rinsing off.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she padded into her bedroom and dried quickly, slipping on shorts and an over-sized tee. The years hadn't been unkind to her, though there was a slight sag now in her breasts and she was slightly fuller in the waist. Her hair, still uncolored, hadn't lost its sheen and surprisingly enough neither had her eyes lost their sparkle. In Hank's eyes, Kate had simply "ripened" rather than aged. God, how she missed him!

Her friends had been like bricks throughout Hank's illness and after his death six months ago. What they didn't understand, or maybe they did, was that she just didn't know what to do with herself anymore. She'd never been a mother, Hank wasn't able. She hadn't worked for most of her married life either. Well, not at a proper job.

Kate had taken care of her husband by herself twenty four seven for most of that time, her only respite when he was in for peritoneal dialysis twice a week. And even then, she used that time to shop and clean and do other things outside the house that she couldn't manage when he was home. Now, she realized, it was time to start taking care of Kate.

Fran had just finished pouring two mugs when she walked back into the kitchen. "Fran, I've made a decision. I need to start doing... "

Also trademark Fran, she didn't wait for her friend to finish. "That's nice, sweetie. It's good to know, cause we're going on a cruise... " Kate waited for the other shoe to drop and she wasn't disappointed. "And so are you."

"Oh, I am, am I?"

"Yes. No arguments. Jack already booked you a cabin and paid." As if to emphasize that it was a done deed, brooking no argument, Fran reached into her purse and pulled out a travel folder with her passage stapled to the inside pocket.

Kate had to smile. It was far from what she'd intended, but it was a start. A good start. "So who else is going?" she asked, knowing that Fran and her husband rarely did things outside a group.

"Oh," she answered with a sly smile. "That you'll have to wait and see."

"Cripes, Fran! You know I hate surprises. You aren't trying to... fix me up are you?"

Fran snorted. "No worries, bub. I'd never do that. You should know better."

In truth, Kate did know, but she still had to ask. "A cruise! Picture that! Picture me!" "I did, girlfriend. I did."

Sipping her coffee and taking a bite of poppyseed cake, she started to look through the brochure, chatting about shopping and what she'd need to take with her. Things were looking up. Definitely looking up.

 

[TheAutumnComes]

Jack Mullins found himself flying solo this morning. It was still more than three months until D-Day. God forbid his absentee boss in New York should have to pay for two employees. There had been three couples lined up for a few hours yesterday, but their inconvience meant little to the bottom line. It was humiliating to be working in this opportunistic, fly-by-night tax agency. For a moment Jack daydreamed about his old office, with his polished oak desk and his deep leather chair. Damn all bosses. This one wouldn’t keep enough employees in the office to handle the load. The last one had pink slipped Jack’s whole department, so he could afford to buy his time share in Aruba outright.

He had hid the realities of their financial situation from Fran. He even booked a cruise for their anniversary and bought her best friend Kate passage. Hank and Kate had always been their best friends. They had taken every vacation together. They had been at each other weddings and anniversary parties. They had been there together for Hank’s slow slide toward the grave. Jack just didn’t want to go through such a time again. If he could just keep up appearances, for Fran’s sake, something would come up. She had suffered right along with Kate. He didn’t want to see that haunted look in her eyes ever again.

Jack stretched and arched his stiff back, leaning his cheap, stackable chair back on two legs in the process. In the processes his slight middle aged paunch lifted, for a moment showing a flicker of the high school swim team captain he had once been. Time hadn’t been terribly cruel to him. He had thick shoulders and long, fit arms. Still, laugh lines had grown more defined around his eyes and his father’s veins were slowly being etched into the back of his hands. His short buzz took some of the sting out of his receding hairline, but it couldn’t hide the silver at his temples. Vanity had almost made him dye his hair any number of times, but his father had always been proud of his gray hair. He had said a man who colored his hair for vanity’s sake was little better than a woman and should get a new frock to go with his new hairdo. Of course, his father had been a mean spirited old drunk, but that didn’t make his statement feel less true to Jack.

“That’s it then.” Jack stood sharply and kicked the crappy chair backwards. The weather outside the front window was dark and depressing. Rain was definitely on its way. There was no line at the door and he really didn’t give a shit about the work. Ignoring the video camera watching his every move, he strode too the coat rack. Seconds later he was on the street, wearing his overcoat with the collar flipped up. He looked up and down the long lines of stores in the strip mall, sighed, and then headed toward the one place that looked like it had any life left.

As Jack entered the deli he was assaulted by the smells of coffee and warm fresh deli rolls. He heard the sounds of Glen Miller playing softly on the musak and the friendly chatter of old men sitting around a table toward the front of the deli. The men glanced over at him, but didn’t wave. There seemed to be at least three conversations going on at the same time. Jack thought he heard something about the teamsters union, the price of denture cream and the possibility that the home team might make it all the way to the big show this time. He nodded at them politely and received nods in response. They frightened him a bit. He still felt young, even if his body betrayed him at times. He could see himself sitting there in a few years, drinking free refills and smoking cigars down to their nubs.

There was a long deli counter to the left of the square store. The right wall held small round tables and a few red leather booths. There was a small grocery section in the middle. Beyond that he could see what looked remarkable like an old-fashioned soda counter with round swivel stools.

 

[It's... She!]

Dominic Galluccio stood over the stove cooking ground round; he'd been awake since four o'clock, tending the new cuttings in the greenhouses. Jenny, his wife of forty eight years, was taking her lunch break also, though she would eat hers in the small room set aside for such things at her place of business. A seamstress of sorts, she had spent the last fifteen years in front of a sewing machine assembling cosmetic bags, garment holders and other accoutrements that were intended to save space in households and hold things for people who traveled.

Sitting down at the expandable tin-top table that was the centerpiece of the kitchen, and the Galluccio house, Dominic poured red wine from a gallon jug into a thick, footed Sau-Sea shrimp cocktail glass that was, he smiled, as were many things in their home, recycled by his wife for other uses. (Sometimes he used one that had originally held Kraft Pimento Spread.) A sliced tomato, some scallions from the last of the outdoor garden and a thick slice of fresh bread from Spaziani's Bakery served as further accompaniments to his meal. It wasn't fancy, but neither was he.

He listened to the radio while he ate; local news, some talk and music droning quietly in the background. They never turned it off. It was their friend in the corner, as it had always been. Finished with his meal, Dominic drained his glass and set it aside before washing the frying pan and his plate.

Putting on his gray button-down sweater, Dominic placed his hat on his head and went out onto the front porch where he'd sit in his rocker and smoke a pipe before walking the short distance back to the greenhouses. Jenny would be waiting for him to pick her up at four. The Galluccios were creatures of habit and neither of them would have it any other way.